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Emma feels normal (read: average) and isolated in her academic-driven family. When she discovers the birth certificate of her long-dead twin brother, the feelings suddenly make sense. The boy-next-door-ish Peter fits in with Emma's family, but can't connect with his father a small-town cop unable to grasp Peter's obsession with maps and desire to see the world. Peter and Emma feel the need to escape. Can anyone say road trip? Emma enlists Peter's help driving from an upstate New York college town to the North Carolina cemetery where her brother is buried. Like all good road novels, this one is chock full of self-discovery. However, there's no grand epiphany or flashy finale. Just like the bond they eventually share, their personal growth is measured, constant, and lasting. Nuanced, thoughtful, and delivered in authentic teen voices (refreshingly free of the hipster-speak some YA novels drown in), this is a book to take one's time with.--Jones, Courtney Copyright 2009 Booklist

Gr 7-10-This book has as rocky a start as the road trip it describes. Emma, 16, feels disconnected from her family of academics and brilliant people. Rather than compete for attention, she's happier being alone. Then she discovers a reason for her feeling of isolation. She had a twin brother who died two days after they were born. Emma, determined to find out more, sets off on a road trip from New York State to North Carolina to see her brother's grave. When her car breaks down in New Jersey, she calls her neighbor Peter, who arrives in a stolen yellow convertible. Along the way, Emma adopts a stray dog, makes peace with her family, and learns that there's more to Peter than his interest in maps and the Civil War. Told in alternating chapters by Emma and Peter, the plot moves jerkily from the present to the past, then back to the present. After an uneven beginning, however, the novel becomes more engaging as Emma seeks answers to why she was never told about her brother.-Melissa Rabey, Frederick County Public Libraries, Frederick, MD (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Discovering that she had a twin brother who died, sixteen-year-old Emma becomes determined to find his grave. She enlists her neighbor Peter to help, and on their road trip they discover much about themselves and each other. All the thinking, remembering, and introspection by the protagonists slows down the story, but there are authentic moments of connection between the characters. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.

Two 16-year-old loners plus a dog take a road trip that brings them together; it's a familiar plot, but Smith invests her somewhat odd and isolated characters with some distinctions that help to make this feel more fresh than that description might lead readers to believe. Emma is a much-younger child in a family of academically gifted children and parents, while Peter's father is the town sheriff in the upstate New York college town where they live and occasionally share space at the same time. As acquaintances recognizing a bond of sorts, they gradually begin to open up to each other. Peter's mother died at his birth, and Emma has just discovered a birth and death certificate minutes apart for a twin brother never before known. An alternating focus on each establishes the differences that have nonetheless managed to lead them to share a similar journey. Still, it's a half-relayed journey at best, one that fails to deal realistically with money, potty breaks or other mundane details of life on the roada lapse that might well prove fatal with readers. (Fiction. 12 up) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Emma feels normal (read: average) and isolated in her academic-driven family. When she discovers the birth certificate of her long-dead twin brother, the feelings suddenly make sense. The boy-next-door-ish Peter fits in with Emma's family, but can't connect with his father—a small-town cop unable to grasp Peter's obsession with maps and desire to see the world. Peter and Emma feel the need to escape. Can anyone say road trip? Emma enlists Peter's help driving from an upstate New York college town to the North Carolina cemetery where her brother is buried. Like all good road novels, this one is chock full of self-discovery. However, there's no grand epiphany or flashy finale. Just like the bond they eventually share, their personal growth is measured, constant, and lasting. Nuanced, thoughtful, and delivered in authentic teen voices (refreshingly free of the hipster-speak some YA novels drown in), this is a book to take one's time with. Copyright 2009 Booklist Reviews.

Gr 7–10—This book has as rocky a start as the road trip it describes. Emma, 16, feels disconnected from her family of academics and brilliant people. Rather than compete for attention, she's happier being alone. Then she discovers a reason for her feeling of isolation. She had a twin brother who died two days after they were born. Emma, determined to find out more, sets off on a road trip from New York State to North Carolina to see her brother's grave. When her car breaks down in New Jersey, she calls her neighbor Peter, who arrives in a stolen yellow convertible. Along the way, Emma adopts a stray dog, makes peace with her family, and learns that there's more to Peter than his interest in maps and the Civil War. Told in alternating chapters by Emma and Peter, the plot moves jerkily from the present to the past, then back to the present. After an uneven beginning, however, the novel becomes more engaging as Emma seeks answers to why she was never told about her brother.—Melissa Rabey, Frederick County Public Libraries, Frederick, MD